He explained a bunch of this stuff to us; apparently there is some kind of ongoing biological process that you have to keep tabs on, and the tank is not ready right away to support fish until you have let the chlorine diffuse out of the water and have let the tank grow the proper population of bacteria. Half the fun in keeping tropical fish seems to be in being the manager of your own private ecosystem, as though you were chief engineer for Life Support on the starship Enterprise.
So when I visited my brother in his suite at SUNY Albany at the end of the semester, and I saw that they had a small fish tank set up, I knew all the right questions to ask. ``How long did it take for your ammonia levels to settle down?'' ``Can you put in a larger fish population yet?'' ``Are the bacteria growing correctly?'' They said that they had no idea about any of the things I asked them. They just put in food, when they remembered. I said, ``But won't the fish die?''
Their response: ``Fish are cheap.''